I was born in Pinellas Co, and remember going to Tiki Gardens as a little kid, around 1972. I think the food was fairly pricey, since even though I wanted to eat there, all I can remember doing was walking around the gardens. Seems like it was always dark when I was there. I remember burning torches, lots of plants, and what seemed like really big Tikis.

the sad thing is, I tried to find the contact person out there in Pinellas county, so that I could talk to them about doing a tiki there and just got the run-around...

hell, I didn't even care about making money on the deal...just wanted to do my part to keep the culture & history alive.

kind of a bummer...

if anyone knows how to get this done or knows who to contact, let me know. I make a living making and selling tikis right here in the Tampa - St Pete - Clearwater area, and I'd be happy to offer my services in order to honor & preserve local tiki history.

Interesting in this random restaurant advertising are three wonderful tiki landmarks of St. Pete past. Tiki Gardens, the Kono Kai (with "Taiwan dinner for two"!) and the incredible Sand Dollar, which was loaded with Witco.

It always felt to us that Tiki Gardens was among the major tiki sites in the country, if not the world. A restaurant, multiple bars, huge gift shop, multiple buildings, parkground and elaborate gardens, entertainment and shows ... it simply had everything. Including giant tikis.

But it doesn't seem to come up in conversation as often as Don the Beachcomber, Trader Vics and other first and second wave tiki landmarks. Wondering why that is, we think it may be because Tiki Gardens closed and was demolished so long ago. It seems it just missed the tiki revival by a handful of years. Even the Kahiki got to see the boom years of the Cocktail Nation.

Also interesting is that, although Tiki Gardens closed long before the age of digital photography, there seem to be a multitude of photographs out there of the place. Try finding an interior shot of the Wreck Bar at the Castaways---aside from one of the two known postcard images, that is. Even the Kahiki, which lasted a little more than a decade longer than TG, seems to be poorly documented online. You can find almost no photographs of the Kahiki interior online aside from the few "official" press photos and scans of brochures and postcards. There are plenty of pictures of Kahiki mugs, but views of the actual building and interior over the years? Not so many. I guess my point here, with the "Lost legends" thread still lingering in my mind, is that we have a great ability now with our equipment and technology and should not take it for granted.

The Tiki Gardens fire sale / auction was on the morning of June 9, 1990, more than ten years before Tiki Central came into being. Before there even was a single WorldWideWeb terminal in a computer lab in Switzerland. Clearly the dark ages. But even so, there must be some people on here who were "into" tiki at the time. And there must be some Floridians on here who were around at the time. We wonder what happened to all the stuff ... the four winds, yes, but some of that should be blowing its way into here. This thread has been active for six years, and it somehow seems surprising to me now that nobody ever came in here to post that "my neighbor ended up with a table and set of chairs from Trader Frank's" or "you can see Lono now up in Clearwater in this guy's backyard" or "I was at the auction and wish I would've spent the extra to snag X," or whatever. What happened to all the big stuff, the huge tikis, who bought them? Probably a restaurant or some business would have bought them, but whoever did ... you would think that it would be known, the info would be out there. In this case, it seems like nobody seems to know what happened to any of it.

Everytime I revisit this thread, I feel like I missed out on something very special. Kind of how I feel about the upcoming loss of the International Marketplace in Waikiki. Well, I've been enjoying the Int'l Markeplace for decades, but I never had a chance to see Tiki Gardens... But I can dream.
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